Augusten Burroughs Quotes - Page 6

And of course, the answer came to me in the same way Jesus comes to those who drink in trailers: as an epiphany.

The most valuable moments and experiences that life has to offer are found only along its most treacherous paths.

People generally like happy endings, which is something I learned from my years in advertising. I like happy endings myself, but only if they're honest. I'm just as happy with a terrible, hopeless ending.

I think writers tend to be experience junkies, and I think they also tend to want to be on the outside looking in.

It terrified me to consider: What if, as a grown-up, I craved another body beside me as still as this one? What then?

You have an incredible body." He reaches out to touch my stomach. I feel no pleasure in his compliment or his touch, only impatience. This is the only feeling. I feel like the paper on which my mood chart is printed.

When people meet me, many times they're very surprised because they expect someone who is kind of wacky with seven piercings and very hip and cool and New York City, and I'm not.

I never get sick of writing my own stories because there's a certain comfort in knowing you will never run out of material. It's relaxing, actually, to write.

What I really want is to sit next to someone under an L.L. bean blanket on the beach in the fall and drink coffee from the same mug. I don't want some rusty '73 Ford Pinto with a factory-defective gas tank that causes it to explode when it's rear-ended in the parking lot of the supermarket. So why do I keep looking for Pintos?

I knew that he was as reliable as a mathematical formula.

He's a really nice guy, if only I weren't me.

The problem with not having anybody to tell you what to do, I understood, is that there was nobody to tell you what not to do.

If you find you require willpower, you aren't ready to lose weight.

and she's a nurse. do you know how hard nursing school is? it's like medical school. so she's obviously smart.

While I liked hamsters, too, the Habitrail cage was expensive. Even I could see that the interconnecting boxes, tubes, and spheres could easily bankrupt a family and lead to addiction later in life. Because, how would you know when to stop? How could you stop? An entire city could be built with a Habitrail.

We were young. We were bored. And the old electroshock therapy machine was just under the stairs in a box next to the Hoover.

I love to both give and receive very old books.

And I tend to listen to NPR when I'm not writing.

Because I've lived in one room my entire life, working at the same table that you use to pay bills at and eat at. It's going to be nice to have actual space.

Before I'm a writer, I'm definitely a reader and when I read memoir, I really want it to be true.

But my favorite band is Curbside Life, out of Chicago.

But I can also write in crappy motel rooms, while standing in line, or sitting in the dentist's chair.

My only ritual is to just sit down and write, write every day.

As a writer, you can't allow yourself the luxury of being discouraged and giving up when you are rejected, either by agents or publishers. You absolutely must plow forward.

I've just finished my next collection, Possible Side Effects, and I'm now working on a collection of holiday stories as well as a memoir about my relationship with my father.